IPF Panel - Shortlisted Images

Guidance re submission of images for printing.

This guidance is aimed at assisting those who have had images shortlisted for the IPF National Club Championship.

Based on advice from IPF, we are aiming to produce panels containing exclusively, or largely, images that are sized as 14" x 10", and mounted on 18" x 14" mounts.

This does NOT mean that we want you to resize your image to 14" x 10", but it does mean that we would like them submitted cropped to a 14:10 (or 10:14) ratio.

We do NOT want images submitted as jpeg files in sRGB colorspace (these are ideal for projection/internet but not for printing).

So please submit a high resolution image, suitably cropped to the ratio above, but as a high resolution TIFF or PSD file, and ideally in AdobeRGB Colorspace.

If you aren't sure how to check or change colourspace, Google is your friend! There is loads of guidance out there - such as this page.

Example of preparing image using Photoshop:

"Sean the Sheep" is a high resolution TIFF file opened in Photoshop.

Note at the bottom left of the Photoshop window that this is in AdobeRGB format. Your installation of Photoshop might not be set up in the same way and you might not see the colorspace here. To get to Photoshop's color settings, go up to the Edit menu in the Menu Bar along the top of the screen and choose Color Settings: Convert to Profile. Check what the existing colorspace is in the first box 'Source space'. If it's already AdobeRGB that's fine - otherwise convert it here to AdobeRGB (1998).

Next we need to crop the image to the correct ratio. Select the crop tool and enter 14 x 10 (or 5 x 7) as the ratio. Do not add 'px' or 'mm' or 'in' or any other unit of measurement, just the numbers!

Now go to Image/Image Size.

This dialogue box displays the current size of the image file and current resolution. Ideally we will be printing these at 300 ppi so if the Resolution isn't already at 300, change it here.

Here you can see that, by increasing the resolution to 300, the actual width and height have increased. That's okay because in this image we have loads to play with and in this case we could actually reduce the pixel size to something slightly smaller and still have a high resolution image for printing.

The minimum resolution we need at 300ppi on an A3 print is 3508 x 4961 pixels. You don't have to reduce your image to these dimensions, but don't go below these numbers.

Save the image once you're done. Submit it to the usual upload@bpicni.com address. You should get an acknowledgement (perhaps not immediately) of a successful submission. If using Gmail and the image is too big it will automatically send it via Google Drive, which is fine. Otherwise you could try using the free 'WeTransfer' service.

That's as far as this guidance goes, hopefully it will be of some assistance.

Again I just want to emphasise - please do not be offended if your image was shortlisted but does not subsequently appear on the panel. Until we get the images printed we will not be able to finalise the selection. This is a Club entry and we want to ensure that we submit the very best entry possible on behalf of BPIC.